An intelligent discussion of this lesson leads us directly into a
subject commonly known as "vegetarianism." The question whether man
should eat the flesh of animals is especially fascinating for those
who give attention to the food they eat. There are many standpoints,
however, from which the subject of vegetarianism may be discussed.
[Sidenote: Influence of religion on man's food]
In the first place, nearly all religious teachings that have wielded
such a powerful influence over the civilization and destiny of men,
have laid some restrictions upon the flesh-eating habit. Some religions
require man to refrain from all animal products, while others interdict
only the flesh of certain animals. Coupled with man's world-wide search
for food, these religious teachings have played a conspicuous part in
the question of human nutrition.
[Sidenote: Vegetarianism from animal's standpoint]
The second phase of the question that merits attention is the moral
side, or vegetarianism from the animal's standpoint; in other words, the
cruelty involved in the slaughter of our dumb friends and helpers, for
whose presence here we are largely responsible. That the practises and
customs which train humanity in cruelty toward animal life, are to be
discouraged, cannot well be disputed, but this phase of vegetarianism is
one which is somewhat without the realm of applied food chemistry, hence
is mentioned only as a factor in the general discussion.
[Sidenote: Vegetarianism from standpoint of scientific living]
I will now consider vegetarianism from the standpoint of true food
science, or the welfare of the physical man. It will be observed that in
the lesson entitled "Evolution of Man," one of the first considerations
taken up is the scientific discussion of man's natural adaptation to the
use of flesh foods. By natural adaptation I mean Nature's evolutionary
plan of fitting the physiological organism to the food man is able to
procure. The organism of man will, to a certain extent, adapt itself to
a given diet within the brief period of one generation, just as, in the
long ages of evolution, the digestive organs of any species of animal
become adapted to such diet as may be procured. Thus it is of especial
importance for us to know the diet of primitive man at a time before his
intellectual resourcefulness made it possible for him to gather his bill
of fare from the four corners of the earth.
[Sidenote: Primitive diet of man]
The diet of our related anthropoid apes, of every primitive savage
tribe, and of our ancestors, indications of which have been found
in fossils and caves--all three throw light upon the subject. The
consensus of these various studies indicates that the original or
natural diet of man was one drawn chiefly from the vegetable kingdom,
but not entirely so. Fruits, nuts, green vegetables, edible foliage,
tubers or roots were all included in man's primitive diet. The foods
of animal origin were varied, and consisted of such articles as birds,
eggs, shell-fish, many insects, and other forms of lower animal life, of
which our modern habit of eating frogs' legs, eels, escargots (snails),
etc., is merely an inheritance.
[Sidenote: Why flesh-eating is unnecessary]
Since the digestive, the assimilative, and the excretory organs of man
have been constructed from, and adapted to, the use of vegetables, it
is obvious that the flesh of animals is unnecessary, especially in view
of the fact that there is nothing in flesh that cannot be secured from
the vegetable world in its best and purest form. Man's primitive diet
does not prove that he is by nature a vegetarian, as is the cow, and
therefore entirely unsuited to digest any material of animal origin. The
anatomy of man's teeth and of his digestive organs, however, indicates
that he is by nature a vegetarian, and that his digestive organs are
prepared to dissolve and to assimilate a diet that is somewhat more
bulky than that of carnivorous animals, but, on the other hand, less
bulky than the diet of animals which subsist wholly upon succulent
plants, as do the purely herbivorous species.
[Sidenote: Food problem of the Aryan races]
Man is by nature a tropical animal, and so long as his habitat was
confined to that section, he could live from the prodigality of
Nature, but when he began his early migration northward, his food was
the greatest problem he had to solve. He was often forced to choose
between eating the flesh of animals and death from starvation. It was
this fierce struggle for food, not the character of his food, which
exercised both the physical and the mental powers, and caused the Aryan
or northern races to think, and therefore to develop into people so much
superior to their tropical brothers.
[Sidenote: Forced to think and to work, man became civilized]
The defenders of flesh food often point to the fact that flesh-eating
people have achieved the highest civilization. Man's superior
achievement in northern countries can no more be credited to
flesh-eating than to the wearing of fur caps or leather boots. To meet
the exigencies of his environment, he was forced to think and to work,
and thinking and working developed the brain and laid the foundation for
his present stage of civilization.
Another reason for the early habit of flesh-eating is found in the
fact that in order to sustain the required amount of body-heat in cold
climates, a liberal consumption of fat was necessary. Vegetable fats
not being available, his only source of supply was from the body-fat of
animals.
[Sidenote: Use of meat unscientific]
Aside from fat, protein is the only nutritive element meat contains.
With the variety of vegetable and butter-fats, and vegetable proteids
available in this age, supplemented by our knowledge of chemistry as a
guide in their use, the consumption of flesh as an article of human food
is entirely unscientific and wholly without reason.
[Sidenote: Life MAY BE maintained by meat]
A diet composed exclusively of flesh contains fat and nitrogenous
compounds only. These two classes of foods can, of course, maintain
life, as was explained in our sixth lesson, as proteid is capable of
forming blood, sugar, and body-fat. The fact, however, that the proteid
or the fat of meat can be made to fill, in the physiological economy,
the place naturally supplied by the carbohydrate materials of vegetable
food, does not prove that such a diet is without its harmful effects.
The living body has many wonderful provisions whereby life is maintained
under unfavorable influences. Just as a blind person develops a sense of
touch which in a way acts as a substitute for sight, so the ability of
the body to convert either proteids or fats into sugar, may be utilized
in cases of emergency, but the using of this emergency or substitute
function of the body cannot develop and energize the human machine as
well or as perfectly as can a naturally balanced diet. The fact that
some people exist largely upon a meat diet does not prove that this is
without its handicapping and evil influences, any more than the use
of alcohol and tobacco proves that man is benefited by indulging in
intoxicants and sedative poisons.
[Sidenote: Flesh-eating produces appetite for stimulants]
That flesh-eating is largely responsible for the universal desire among
civilized people for some form of stimulant has ceased to be questioned
by those who have been placed in a position to make experiments--the
source from which all real knowledge is obtained. These conclusions were
first forced upon the writer by noticing the gradual decline of appetite
for coffee and tobacco in his own case, when he began to subsist upon
natural foods. With this hint no opportunity was lost, among the
thousands of patients he treated, to observe the effects and get at the
truth. If only one or two people had completely lost their appetite
for all forms of stimulation, after following a natural food regimen,
it might have revealed only an idiosyncrasy. When a dozen undergo the
same treatment, with the same results, it leaves but little doubt that
the theory may be true, but when many hundreds give the same testimony,
through a period of a dozen years' practise, it reveals a truth that
cannot be consistently doubted. Such experience proves beyond doubt
that flesh-eating supports and perpetuates the habit of taking distilled
and ardent liquors, tobacco, tea, and coffee, and the numerous drugs
which, altogether, have done the human race more harm; dethroned more
intelligence; sapped from the human economy more vitality; ruined more
homes; made more widows and orphans; changed more natural virtue into
vice, and caused more sorrow and tears, more failure and fears, than all
other agencies of destruction combined.
Since fats and proteids are the only nutrients supplied by flesh foods,
we may well ask, "Is meat the best source from which these elements may
be secured?"
[Sidenote: Flesh food contains unexcreted waste matter]
The proteid substance of meat includes all the edible portion of a
carcass except the fat. The proteid of meat is more easily and more
rapidly digested than the proteid of vegetables. Notwithstanding this
fact, there are serious objections to the use of meat as a source of
nitrogen. All flesh food contains the unexcreted waste matter of the
slaughtered animal. When the process of metabolism that is continually
going on during life is suddenly arrested by death, the effete and
decomposing cells, and the partly oxidized waste-products which are
still held in the muscle-tissues, are left in the flesh of the dead
animal, hence these poisons must be consumed by the flesh-eater in order
to secure the meat proteids and fats.
[Sidenote: Body-poisons generated by fear]
It is now a matter of common knowledge among scientists, and among
the more advanced school of pathologists, that the usual conditions
under which animals are slain change the chemical constituents of the
blood-serum, charging it with a form of poison that to the chemist is as
yet unknown, but the presence and the potency of which is attested by
its effect.
The method of slaughtering animals in the great abattoirs is especially
conducive to the generation of these poisons. The condemned herd is
driven to the place of slaughter and killed, one at a time, in plain
view of their fellows. These animals are very intelligent and possess
remarkable senses of danger. They are as conscious of approaching death
as the creature who takes their lives, hence the amount of poisons
generated in their bodies is measured by the time they are kept in
waiting. Most animals when killed labor under these conditions, and
that these mental states render their flesh entirely unfit for human
nutrition can no longer be questioned.
[Sidenote: Mother's milk poisoned by fear or anger]
We find fragments of evidence supporting this theory in the fact that
Nature's perfect food--the milk of a nursing animal, or of a nursing
mother--can be changed in an instant into a poison by sudden fright,
anger, or fear.
[Sidenote: Meat a source of autointoxication]
Thus we see that in eating meat, we are eating animal waste-material
similar to that thrown off through our own body-cells. The waste
material in meat being soluble, passes through the walls of our
digestive organs, and enters the circulation, where it is added to
similar poisons which are constantly being produced within our own
bodies. It is the universal law of animal cell-growth that the waste
matter of the cell acts as its own poison. When bacteria, growing in
a solution of sugar, have excreted alcohol until it forms a certain
percentage of the total contents, their activity ceases--they die from
poisons thrown off from their own bodies. This is the reason that
liquids containing a high percentage of alcohol must be distilled, and
cannot be brewed. It is obvious, therefore, that in the consumption
of flesh, we are adding to our bodies the poisons that are residual
in the body of other animals, and are, therefore, approaching the
conditions under which bacteria kill themselves by autointoxication or
self-poisoning.
Plants utilize the carbon dioxid excreted by the animal, and the
excrement of animals is in turn used to fertilize our fields. Although
one form of life may utilize what is excreted by another form of life,
the living thing that cannot get away from the excreted matter of its
own activity is poisoned thereby.
[Sidenote: Flesh food burdens the excretory organs]
The flesh of animals whose physiological processes are almost identical
with our own, containing as it does waste-products that have not yet
been excreted, must, when taken into the human body, add extra burdens
to our excretory organs which are usually burdened with all they can
do. Carnivorous animals are especially provided with an excretory
system capable of taking care of such matter, but it is unreasonable to
expect the excretory organs of man, which are not adapted to such a
purpose, to throw off, in addition to the regular body-poisons, similar
decomposing products of other animals.
[Sidenote: Flesh-eating will disappear as science advances]
It is true that flesh will support, and has supported what is commonly
regarded as a high form of anthropoid life (man), but not having the
natural standard from which to measure, we do not know how much better
the opposite course would have been, or just how much longer one would
live under a perfectly natural regimen. The effects of flesh-eating have
not been definitely known until recent years, but is now acknowledged
by the most advanced authorities to be one of the greatest errors of
civilized people, and will, within a few years, disappear from the
catalog of human habits, when the great masses of people are made
familiar with the chemistry of food, and how to secure vegetable instead
of animal proteids and fats.